Early Life in Selma
Alice Martin was born on May 27, 1929, in Selma, Alabama — the heart of the Black Belt, a region named for its rich dark soil and defined for generations by the brutal economics of cotton and the iron architecture of Jim Crow. She was one of three children born to Mr. and Mrs. Malachi Martin, and she grew up in a Selma where Black residents were systematically denied the most basic right of citizenship: the right to vote.
Dallas County, where Selma sits, had a population that was more than 57% Black in 1965 — yet fewer than 335 of the county's 15,000 eligible Black voters were registered. The barriers were by design: literacy tests administered arbitrarily, poll taxes, economic intimidation, and the ever-present threat of violence. Alice Martin grew up knowing these walls intimately.
In 1946, at the age of seventeen, Alice Martin married Lonzy West, Sr. She would go on to raise eleven children and make her home in the George Washington Carver Homes — the public housing project adjacent to Brown Chapel AME Church that would, two decades later, become the staging ground for the most consequential voting rights campaign in American history.
Brown Chapel AME Church, Selma — the movement's command center, adjacent to the Carver Homes where Alice West lived
Historical photograph
Alice Martin West — official portrait
Randall Miller Funeral Service, 2023
George Washington Carver Homes, Selma, Alabama — Alice West's home and the center of the 1965 civil rights campaign
Alabama Department of Archives and History
The Carver Homes
The George Washington Carver Homes were built in the 1940s as segregated public housing for Black residents of Selma. The complex sat directly adjacent to Brown Chapel AME Church — the church that would serve as the command center of the 1965 Selma Voting Rights Campaign.
Alice West raised her children at apartment 313E in the Carver Homes, next door to the Webb family — the family of Sheyann Webb, "the youngest marcher" of the Selma campaign. Rachel West Nelson later recalled this proximity vividly. The Carver Homes was the neighborhood from which the movement drew its deepest roots.
Alabama Historical Marker at George Washington Carver Homes
Bloody Sunday & The March
On March 7, 1965 — Bloody Sunday — Alice West stood in the shadow of Brown Chapel AME Church and watched as 600 marchers were beaten back by state troopers and a mounted posse on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The National Guard was encamped, in her own words, "almost in my back yard behind Brown Church."
She was a witness to history — and then she became a participant in it. Alice and Lonzy West joined the Selma-to-Montgomery March when it finally completed on March 25, 1965, walking the final leg from St. Jude's Catholic School in Montgomery to the Alabama State Capitol. The photograph of Lonzy and Alice West — smiling, arm in arm, surrounded by thousands of marchers — is one of the defining images of the movement.
The march ended in triumph. President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 on August 6 of that year. Alice and Lonzy West had walked for it.
CRMVET — Alice & Rachel West Living History
"Lonzy West & Mrs. Alice M. West at last leg of Selma – Montgomery March" — March 25, 1965
Family photograph — primary historical document
Edmund Pettus Bridge — Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965
Historical photograph, 1965
"I would like to tell you what a day like 'Bloody Sunday' was, and how it affected me and my family. The mass meeting at Brown Chapel, the National Guard almost in my back yard behind Brown Church, and finally the peaceful march and climax ending in Mrs. Liuzzo's death."
Alice Martin West — announcement of her passing, March 3, 2023
Registering the Vote
Alice West's civil rights work was not confined to marching. In the months and years following the Voting Rights Act, she became a tireless voter registration worker in Dallas County. She personally assisted more than 300 people in registering to vote — a number that represents not just a statistic but 300 individual acts of courage in a county where registering to vote could cost you your job, your home, or your safety.
Her husband Lonzy West, Sr. had himself been a target of the system's voter suppression machinery. In January 1965, the New York Times reported on the elaborate literacy tests being applied to Black applicants in Alabama — tests designed not to assess literacy but to fail Black voters. Lonzy West's attempts to register were part of this documented pattern of systematic disenfranchisement.
Together, Alice and Lonzy West turned their personal experience of exclusion into a mission of inclusion. Their voter registration work was documented by the Civil Rights Movement Veterans Archive as among the most sustained grassroots efforts in the Selma campaign.
A Life of Faith
Alice Martin West was a devout, lifelong Catholic — a member of Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church in Selma, the parish founded and served by the Society of St. Edmund (the Edmundites). The Edmundites had been working in the Black Catholic community of the Alabama Black Belt since 1937, and Our Lady Queen of Peace was the spiritual home of Selma's Black Catholic community.
Her faith was not separate from her activism — it was the source of it. The Catholic social teaching of human dignity, the preferential option for the poor, and the call to work for justice in the world were not abstractions for Alice West. They were the reason she opened her door, the reason she walked, and the reason she registered voters.
It was through her parish that she came to know Jonathan Daniels — the Episcopal seminary student who came to Selma after watching Bloody Sunday on television, moved in with her family, and was martyred on August 20, 1965. Alice said of him: "He taught my family all about the wonders of God's love. His death took a toll on my family as well as all the Black people in Selma."
Our Lady Queen of Peace — Parish History
Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church, 309 Lawrence St., Selma, Alabama — Alice West's spiritual home
Photograph, 2020s
The Selma to Montgomery March, 1965 — Alice and Lonzy West walked the final leg
Historical photograph, 1965
Later Years & Legacy
In the decades after 1965, Alice West continued her community work with the same quiet determination that had defined her activism. She and Lonzy co-founded a child development center for underprivileged children in Selma — a center that was later renamed the Jonathan Daniels Daycare Center in honor of the young man who had lived and died as part of their family.
Her daughter Rachel West Nelson co-authored Selma, Lord, Selma (1979) with Sheyann Webb — a book that brought the story of the West family and the Selma movement to a national audience. The book was adapted into a Disney television film in 1999, bringing Alice West's story to millions of viewers.
In 2015, on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, Alice West was among the Selma Foot Soldiers honored by Congress with the Congressional Gold Medal — the nation's highest civilian honor — under Public Law 114-5.
In 2020, at the age of 91, she sat for an interview with the Black Belt News Network, reflecting on the battles of yesterday and today. She remained sharp, engaged, and unwavering in her conviction that the work was not finished.
Alice Martin West died peacefully at her home on March 3, 2023, surrounded by her family — one day before the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. She was 93 years old. Selma mourned.
Parents
Mr. and Mrs. Malachi Martin
Selma, Alabama
One of three children
Marriage
Married Lonzy West, Sr., 1946
Eleven children
Many grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and great-great-grandchildren
Notable Descendants
Rachel West Nelson — co-author, Selma, Lord, Selma (1979)
Roderick West — son, present at 2015 Bloody Sunday commemoration
Alice West Foundation — family-run legacy organization
We have come a long way. But maybe we can continue to move forward to make this a better world for all people.— Alice Martin West